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The Chief Element In The Art Of Statesmanship Under Modern Conditions Is The Ability To Elucidate The Confused And Clamorous Interests Which Converge Upon The Seat Of Government. It Is An Ability To Penetrate From The Na?ve Self-interest Of Each Group To Its Permanent And Real Interest. Statesmanship Consists In Giving The People Not What They Want But What They Will Learn To Want.
-Walter Lippmann
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The Chief Element In

Walter Lippmann
The Chief Element In The Art Of Statesmanship Under Modern Conditions Is The Ability To Elucidate The Confused And Clamorous Interests Which Converge Upon The Seat Of Government. It Is An Ability To Penetrate From The Na?ve Self-interest Of Each Group To Its Permanent And Real Interest. Statesmanship Consists In Giving The People Not What They Want But What They Will Learn To Want.
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Effort
Facts
We Say That The Truth Will Make Us Free. Yes, But That Truth Is A Thousand Truths Which Grow And Change.
Truth
Truth Is
Thousand
There Is But One Bond Of Peace That Is Both Permanent And Enriching: The Increasing Knowledge Of The World In Which Experiment Occurs.
Peace
World
Increasing Knowledge
Run Against The Grain Of A Nation's Genius And See Where You Get With Your Laws.
Running
Law
Genius
Great Men, Even During Their Lifetime, Are Usually Known To The Public Only Through A Fictitious Personality.
Men
Personality
Lifetime
But What Is Propaganda, If Not The Effort To Alter The Picture To Which Men Respond, To Substitute One Social Pattern For Another?
Men
Effort
Patterns
Where There Is No Danger Of Overt Action There Is Rarely Any Interference With Freedom. That Is Why There Has So Often Been Amazing Freedom Of Opinion Within An Aristocratic Class Which At The Same Time Sanctioned The Ruthless Suppression Of Heterodox Opinion Among The Common People. When The Inquisition Was Operating Most Effectively Against The Bourgeois Who Had Lapsed Into Heresy, The Princes Of The Church And The Nobles Enjoyed The Freedom Of The Renaissance.
Class
People
Church
The Man Who Will Follow Precedent, But Never Create One, Is Merely An Obvious Example Of The Routineer. You Find Him Desperately Numerous In The Civil Service, In The Official Bureaus. To Him Government Is Something Given As Unconditionally, As Absolutely As Ocean Or Hill. He Goes On Winding The Tape That He Finds. His Imagination Has Rarely Extricated Itself From Under The Administrative Machine To Gain Any Sense Of What A Human, Temporary Contraption The Whole Affair Is. What He Thinks Is The Heavens Above Him Is Nothing But The Roof.
Ocean
Men
Thinking
The Private Citizen, Beset By Partisan Appeals For The Loan Of His Public Opinion, Will Soon See, Perhaps, That These Appeals Are Not A Compliment To His Intelligence, But An Imposition On His Good Nature And An Insult To His Sense Of Evidence.
Public Opinion
Citizens
Comeback
The World Is A Better Place To Live In Because It Contains Human Beings Who Will Give Up Ease And Security In Order To Do What They Themselves Think Worth Doing. They Do The Useless, Brave, Noble, Divinely Foolish, And The Very Wisest Things That Are Done By Man. And What They Prove To Themselves And To Others Is That Man Is No Mere Creature Of His Habits, No Automaton In His Routine, But That In The Dust Of Which He Is Made There Is Also Fire, Lighted Now And Then By Great Winds From The Sky.
Giving Up
Men
Thinking
Art Enlarges Experience By Admitting Us To The Inner Life Of Others.
Art
Admitting
Lives Of Others
What Each Man Does Is Based Not On Direct And Certain Knowledge, But On Pictures Made By Himself Or Given To Him...
Men
Doe
World
The Consent Of The Governed" Is More Than A Safeguard Against Ignorant Tyrants: It Is An Insurance Against Benevolent Despots As Well.
Tyrants
Ignorant
Democracy
The Writers Who Have Nothing To Say, Are The Ones You Can Buy, The Others Have Too High A Price.
Our Conscience Is Not The Vessel Of Eternal Verities. It Grows With Our Social Life, And A New Social Condition Means A Radical Change In Conscience.
Change
Mean
Social
A Democracy Which Fails To Concentrate Authority In An Emergency Inevitably Falls Into Such Confusion That The Ground Is Prepared For The Rise Of A Dictator.
Fall
Confusion
Democracy
There Is Nothing So Bad But It Can Masquerade As Moral.
Ethics
Morality
Moral
Since My Moral System Rests On My Accepted Version Of The Facts, He Who Denies My Moral Judgments Or My Version Of The Facts, Is To Me Perverse, Alien, Dangerous. How Shall I Account For Him? The Opponent Has Always To Be Explained, And The Last Explanation That We Ever Look For Is That He Sees A Different Set Of Facts. Such An Explanation We Avoid, Because It Saps The Very Foundation Of Our Own Assurance That We Have Seen Life Steadily And Seen It Whole.
Looks
Sap
Opponents
The Common Interests Very Largely Elude Public Opinion Entirely, And Can Be Managed Only By A Specialised Class.
Class
Public Opinion
Elude
It Is In Time Of Peace That The Value Of Life Is Fixed. The Test Of War Reveals It.
War
Tests
Life Is
The Facts We See Depend On Where We Are Placed And The Habits Of Our Eyes.
Eye
Facts
Habit
Robinson Crusoe, The Self-sufficient Man, Could Not Have Lived In New York City.
New York
Men
Self
We Are Told About The World Before We See It. We Imagine Most Things Before We Experience Them. And Those Preconceptions, Unless Education Has Made Us Acutely Aware, Govern Deeply The Whole Process Of Perception.
Perception
World
Imagine
Usually It Is The Stereotyped Shape Assumed By An Event At An Obvious Place That Uncovers The Run Of The News.
Running
Events
News
Liberty May Be An Uncomfortable Blessing Unless You Know What To Do With It. That Is Why So Many Freed Slaves Returned To Their Masters, Why So Many Emancipated Women Are Only Too Glad To Give Up The Racket And Settle Down. For Between Announcing That You Will Live Your Own Life, And The Living Of It Lie The Real Difficulties Of Any Awakening.
Giving Up
Real
Lying
We Must Abandon The Notion That The People Govern. Instead, We Must Adopt The Theory That, By Their Occasional Mobilisations As A Majority, People Support Or Oppose The Individuals Who Actually Govern.
Freedom
People
Support
The Opposition Is Indispensable. A Good Statesman, Like Any Other Sensible Human Being, Always Learns More From His Opposition Than From His Fervent Supporters.
Learning
Glowing
Politics
So Far As I Am Concerned I Have No Doctrinaire Belief In Free Speech. In The Interest Of The War It Is Necessary To Sacrifice Some Of It.
War
Sacrifice
Speech
There Are At Least Two Distinct Selves, The Public And Regal Self, The Private And Human.
Self
Two
Regal
There Is Nothing Disastrous In The Temporary Nature Of Our Ideas. They Are Always That. But There May Very Easily Be A Train Of Evil In The Self-deception Which Regards Them As Final. I Think God Will Forgive Us Our Skepticism Sooner Than Our Inquisitions.
Thinking
Self
Ideas
Love Endures When The Lovers Love Many Things Together And Not Merely Each Other.
Love
Together
Endure
Freedom To Speak... Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Debate
Speak
Promoting
Without Criticism And Reliable And Intelligent Reporting, The Government Cannot Govern.
Intelligent
Government
Criticism
In Government Offices Which Are Sensitive To The Vehemence And Passion Of Mass Sentiment Public Men Have No Sure Tenure. They Are In Effect Perpetual Office Seekers, Always On Trial For Their Political Lives, Always Required To Court Their Restless Constituents.
Passion
Men
Office
The Life Of A Savage Is Beset By Glowering Terrors: From Birth To Death He Lives In An Animated World; Where The Sun And The Stars, Sticks, Stones, And Rivers Are Obsessed With His Fate. He Is Busy All The Time In A Ritual Designed To Propitiate The Abounding Jealousies Of Nature. For His World Is Magical And Capricious, The Simplest Thing Is Occult.
Stars
Fate
Rivers
Our Life Is Managed From Behind The Scenes: We Are Actors In Dramas That We Cannot Interpret. Of Almost No Decisive Event Can We Say: This Was Our Own Choosing. We Happen Upon Careers, Necessity Pushing, Blind Inclination Pulling. If We Stop To Think We Are Amazed That We Should Be What We Are.
Life
Drama
Thinking
Creative Ideas Come To The Intuitive Person Who Can Face Up To The Insecurity Of Looking Beyond The Obvious.
Ideas
Creative
Insecurity
Modern Men Are Afraid Of The Past. It Is A Record Of Human Achievement, But Its Other Face Is Human Defeat.
Past
Men
Records
Men Are Mortal, But Ideas Are Immortal.
Men
Ideas
Immortal
Nobody Has Yet Found A Way Of Bombing That Can Prevent Foot Soldiers From Walking.
Military
Feet
Soldier
No Amount Of Charters, Direct Primaries, Or Short Ballots Will Make A Democracy Out Of An Illiterate People.
Education
Hair
People
A More Conscious Life Is One In Which A Man Is Conscious Not Only Of What He Sees, But Of The Prejudices With Which He Sees It.
Men
Prejudice
Life Is
Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created.
Records
Machines
Tradition
The Unexamined Life, Said Socrates, Is Unfit To Be Lived By Man. This Is The Virtue Of Liberty, And The Ground On Which We May Justify Our Belief In It, That It Tolerates Error In Order To Serve Truth.
Men
Errors
Order
It Has Been The Fashion To Speak Of The Conflict Between Human Rights And Property Rights, And From This It Has Come To Be Widely Believed That The Use Of Private Property Is Tainted With Evil And Should Not Be Espoused By Rational And Civilized Men... The Only Dependable Foundation Of Personal Liberty Is The Personal Economic Security Of Private Property. The Good Society.
Wisdom
Fashion
Men
The Public Interest May Be Presumed To Be What Men Would Choose If They Saw Clearly, Thought Rationally, Acted Disinterestedly And Benevolently.
Men
May
Saws
A Man Cannot Be A Good Doctor And Keep Telephoning His Broker Between Patients Nor A Good Lawyer With His Eye On The Ticker.
Eye
Men
Doctors
When Men Are Brought Face To Face With Their Opponents, Forced To Listen And Learn And Mend Their Ideas, They Cease To Be Children And Savages And Begin To Live Like Civilized Men. Then Only Is Freedom A Reality, When Men May Voice Their Opinions Because They Must Examine Their Opinions.
Children
Reality
Men
The American's Conviction That He Must Be Able To Look Any Man In The Eye And Tell Him To Go To Hell Is The Very Essence Of The Free Man's Way Of Life.
Eye
Men
Essence
Life Can Be Swamped By Sex Very Easily If Sex Is Not Normally Satisfied.
Sex
Satisfied
Ifs
For In The Absence Of Debate Unrestricted Utterance Leads To The Degradation Of Opinion. By A Kind Of Greshams Law The More Rational Is Overcome By The Less Rational, And The Opinions That Will Prevail Will Be Those Which Are Held Most Ardently By Those With The Most Passionate Will. For That Reason The Freedom To Speak Can Never Be Maintained Merely By Objecting To Interference With The Liberty Of The Press, Of Printing, Of Broadcasting, Of The Screen. It Can Be Maintained Only By Promoting Debate.
Law
Liberty
Overcoming
Almost Always Tradition Is Nothing But A Record And A Machine-made Imitation Of The Habits That Our Ancestors Created. The Average Conservative Is A Slave To The Most Incidental And Trivial Part Of His Forefathers Glory - To The Archaic Formula Which Happened To Express Their Genius Or The Eighteenth-century Contrivance By Which For A Time It Was Served.
Average
Genius
Machines
The Central Drama Of Our Age Is How The Western Nations And The Asian Peoples Are To Find A Tolerable Basis Of Co-existence.
Drama
Age
Asian
The Bill Of Rights Does Not Come From The People And Is Not Subject To Change By Majorities. It Comes From The Nature Of Things. It Declares The Inalienable Rights Of Man Not Only Against All Government But Also Against The People Collectively.
Men
Rights
People
There Can Be No Higher Law In Journalism Than To Tell The Truth And To Shame The Devil.
Law
Devil
Journalism
The Devil Is Merely A Fallen Angel, And When God Lost Satan He Lost One Of His Best Lieutenants.
Angel
Lost Ones
Devil
To Create A Minimum Standard Of Life Below Which No Human Being Can Fall Is The Most Elementary Duty Of The Democratic State.
Fall
States
Standards
Certainly He Is Not Of The Generation That Regards Honesty As The Best Policy. However, He Does Regard It As A Policy.
Honesty
Doe
Generations
The Simple Opposition Between The People And Big Business Has Disappeared Because The People Themselves Have Become So Deeply Involved In Big Business.
Business
Simple
People
The Unions Are The First Feeble Effort To Conquer The Industrial Jungle For Democratic Life. They May Not Succeed, But If They Don't Their Failure Will Be A Tragedy For Civilization, A Loss Of Cooperative Effort, A Baulking Of Energy, And The Fixing In American Life Of A Class-structure.
Loss
Civilization
Class
We Must Remember That In Time Of War What Is Said On The Enemy's Side Of The Front Is Always Propaganda And What Is Said On Our Side Of The Front Is Truth And Righteousness, The Cause Of Humanity And A Crusade For Peace.
War
Cynical
Humanity
The Prophecy Of A World Moving Toward Political Unity Is The Light Which Guides All That Is Best, Most Vigorous, Most Truly Alive In The Work Of Our Time.
Moving
Light
Diversity
In Really Hard Times The Rules Of The Game Are Altered. The Inchoate Mass Begins To Stir. It Becomes Potent, And When It Strikes, It Strikes With Incredible Emphasis. Those Are The Rare Occasions When A National Will Emerges From The Scattered, Specialized, Or Indifferent Blocs Of Voters Who Ordinarily Elect The Politicians. Those Are For Good Or Evil The Great Occasions In A Nation's History.
Hard Times
Games
Evil
The Smashing Of Idols Is In Itself Such A Preoccupation That It Is Almost Impossible For The Iconoclast To Look Clearly Into A Future When There Will Not Be Many Idols Left To Smash.
Idols
Society
Looks
Whatever Truth You Contribute To The World Will Be One Lucky Shot In A Thousand Misses. You Cannot Be Right By Holding Your Breath And Taking Precautions.
Missing
Lucky
World
Football Strategy Does Not Originate In A Scrimmage: It Is Useless To Expect Solutions In A Political Campaign.
Football
Political
Useless
In A Place Where Everybody Thinks Alike, Nobody Thinks Very Much.
Thinking
You Don't Have To Preach Honesty To Men With A Creative Purpose. A Genuine Craftsman Will Not Adulterate This Product. The Reason Isn't Because Duty Says He Shouldn't, But Because Passion Says He Couldn't.
Honesty
Passion
Men
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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